Message from president Simmons

By
Adele Simmons, Special to The Christian Science Monitor,
Adele Simmons is president of Hampshire College and was invited by the Monitor to make a statement about Hampshire after reading Mr. Harsch's article. /
January 21, 1980

Amherst, Mass.

Certain attitudes seem characteristic of Hampshire students and graduates -- a healthy skepticism about orthodoxy, a concern with questions of human welfare, and a preference for Collaboration over competition. Educational research cannot tell us whether Hampshire (or any other college) instills particular ways of thinking, but perhaps it is enough to know that at least we do not extinguish these attitudes where they already exist.

Hampshire students often bring a feisty, questioning voice to classes they take at Hampshire and at the other institutions of the five-college consortium -- amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. Once graduated, those who pursue advanced degrees have earned a reputation for independent thinking. Some graduates who start their own small business or work in corporations align themselves with those within American business who are trying to humanize the workplace.

By working to promote humanist values and the full development of human potential, graduates of Hampshire and other liberal arts colleges give hope that we have citizens equal to their tasks in the difficult decades ahead.